But after living with this AD for the last few years, what do you think is more likely: MSUDersh being mistaken or the AD actually doing something like this to fans that aren't in a position to have a coaching seat named after them following a massive donation?

Of all the MSU guys I interact with over at SB Nation, he is one of the more reasonable and honest when it comes to Michigan, and he is a very well known commodity. This isn't some random poster coming out of the woodwork to trash the Michigan AD. I would be shocked if he was lying or even exaggerating things.

as much as a deeper look at some of the things that happened and why some of these plays didn't work as well as what the defense was doing. I still think he has a hand in some of these plays not working, but there are enough instances of players just failing to execute relatively simple things (Funchess whiffing the downblock on an IV) that you can't put it all on Borges.

I'm not really a big fan of Borges and his play calling style or offensive philosophy (spread 4 life). However, I think the offensive line issues in this one were a bigger issue than anything he did or didn't do, so I wanted to look a little closer at some of those and hopefully get people like SC to jump in with more nuanced explanations of what I was seeing (or what I missed).

Lately it seems like a lot of people just want to jump on board the "fire Borges" bandwagon. I'm not quite ready to do so (nor do I think it matters because he isn't getting fired this year anyway). I just want to get a better idea why an offensive performance like this happens.

It is that there is no punishment at all when schools renege on NLIs. Schools are free to do as they please, to accept a player and honor their promise to offer him a scholarship months after he signed a contract that he and most other players think guarantee them something. It is a completely one-sided agreement that strips a mass of individuals of rights while providing no guarantee in return.

Sure, 99% of NLI's end in a player getting a scholarship, but it's that 1% that is extremely troubling. FIxing the system and giving recruits more rights and benefits isn't going to have an adverse effect on the 99%, but it will be a more fair system to the 1%.

Also, the solution isn't to allow any player out of their NLI. It is to make it so if a school accepts a player's NLI then that school will honor its end of the bargain and offer a scholarship. That won't help players like Vanderdoes, but it will at least make the NLI more of a two-way agreement and less a fancy way to strip potential college athletes of a lot of rights while not guaranteeing anything in return.

Well, first of all Denard only played one game at not-QB before OSU (vs. a pretty terrible Iowa team) and he had over a month to prepare for South Carolina.

But more to the point, you cite how little that mattered in the first half without realizing that maybe Meyer and co. made a few adjustments after halftime after it became obvious that Michigan was using Robinson in a very limited role.

Now, you can make the argument that UM did this because Borges is stupid or bad at his job, but isn't it within the realm of possibility that a guy who was injured and only had a couple weeks of practice at RB might be limited in what he could run as part of the offense? I'm not saying that Borges is above reproach, but you have to take the entire situation into account, and Robinson sliding into RB on short notice isn't an ideal one given the complexities of football.

I'm going to say no, and that this is more trolling from an otherwise pretty solid writer (Luke Zimmermann used to write at 11W as well as moonlighting at EDSBS).

I haven't followed much of Land Grant Holy-Land in the past few months, but I know the site has really upped its traffic, and I think part of that is appealing to the dumbest parts of the fan base which earns you a little more street cred in the fight for traffic. However, some of the other things I have read there have been pretty solid and well written/reasoned.

Still, the level of "not getting it" in that comparision Luke did was off the charts.